Economist Philip Martin of the University of California likes
to tell a story about the state's tomato industry. In the
early 1960s, growers relied on seasonal Mexican laborers,
brought in under the government's "bracero" program. The
Mexicans picked the tomatoes that were then processed into
ketchup and other products. In 1964 Congress killed the
program despite growers' warnings that its abolition would
doom their industry. What happened? Well, plant scientists
developed oblong tomatoes that could be harvested by machine.
Since then, California's tomato output has risen fivefold.

It's a story worth remembering, because we're being warned
again that we need huge numbers of "guest workers" -- meaning
unskilled laborers from Mexico and Central America -- to
relieve U.S. "labor shortages." Indeed, the shortages will
supposedly worsen as baby boomers retire. President Bush wants
an open-ended program. Sens. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) and
John McCain (R-Ariz.) advocate initially admitting 400,000
guest workers annually. The Senate is considering these and
other plans.

Gosh, they're all bad ideas.

Guest workers would mainly legalize today's vast inflows of
illegal immigrants, with the same consequence: We'd be
importing poverty. This isn't because these immigrants aren't
hardworking; many are. Nor is it because they don't
assimilate; many do. But they generally don't go home,
assimilation is slow and the ranks of the poor are constantly
replenished. Since 1980 the number of Hispanics with incomes
below the government's poverty line (about $19,300 in 2004 for
a family of four) has risen 162 percent. Over the same period,
the number of non-Hispanic whites in poverty rose 3 percent
and the number of blacks, 9.5 percent. What we have now -- and
would with guest workers -- is a conscious policy of creating
poverty in the United States while relieving it in Mexico. By
and large, this is a bad bargain for the United States. It
stresses local schools, hospitals and housing; it feeds social
tensions (witness the Minutemen). To be sure, some Americans
get cheap housecleaning or landscaping services. But if more
mowed their own lawns or did their own laundry, it wouldn't be
a tragedy.

The most lunatic notion is that admitting more poor Latino
workers would ease the labor market strains of retiring baby
boomers. The two aren't close substitutes for each other.
Among immigrant Mexican and Central American workers in 2004,
only 7 percent had a college degree and nearly 60 percent
lacked a high school diploma, according to the Congressional
Budget Office. Among native-born U.S. workers, 32 percent had
a college degree and only 6 percent did not have a high school
diploma. Far from softening the social problems of an aging
society, more poor immigrants might aggravate them by pitting
older retirees against younger Hispanics for limited
government benefits.

It's a myth that the U.S. economy "needs" more poor
immigrants. The illegal immigrants already here represent only
about 4.9 percent of the labor force, the Pew Hispanic Center
reports. In no major occupation are they a majority. They're
36 percent of insulation workers, 28 percent of drywall
installers and 20 percent of cooks. They're drawn here by wage
differences, not labor "shortages." In 2004, the median hourly
wage in Mexico was $1.86, compared with $9 for Mexicans
working in the United States, said Rakesh Kochhar of Pew. With
high labor turnover in the jobs they take, most new illegal
immigrants can get work by accepting wages slightly below
prevailing levels.

Hardly anyone thinks that most illegal immigrants will leave.
But what would happen if new illegal immigration stopped and
wasn't replaced by guest workers? Well, some employers would
raise wages to attract U.S. workers. Facing greater labor
costs, some industries would -- like the tomato growers in the
1960s -- find ways to minimize those costs. As to the rest,
what's wrong with higher wages for the poorest workers? From
1994 to 2004, the wages of high school dropouts rose only 2.3
percent (after inflation) compared with 11.9 percent for
college graduates.

President Bush says his guest worker program would "match
willing foreign workers with willing American employers, when
no Americans can be found to fill the jobs." But at some
higher wage, there would be willing Americans. The number of
native high school dropouts with jobs declined by 1.3 million
from 2000 to 2005, estimates Steven Camarota of the Center for
Immigration Studies, which favors less immigration. Some lost
jobs to immigrants. Unemployment remains high for some groups
(9.3 percent for African Americans, 12.7 percent for white
teenagers).

Business organizations understandably support guest worker
programs.&Ynbsp; They like cheap labor and ignore the social
consequences. What's more perplexing is why liberals, staunch
opponents of poverty and inequality, support a program that
worsens poverty and inequality. Poor immigrant workers hurt
the wages of unskilled Americans. The only question is how
much. Studies suggest a range "from negligible to an earnings
reduction of almost 10 percent," according to the CBO.

It's said that having guest workers is better than having poor
illegal immigrants. With legal status, they'd have rights and
protections. They'd have more peace of mind and face less
exploitation by employers. This would be convincing if its
premise were incontestable: that we can't control our southern
border. But that's unproved. We've never tried a policy of
real barriers and strict enforcement against companies that
hire illegal immigrants. Until that's shown to be ineffective,
we shouldn't adopt guest worker programs that don't solve
serious social problems -- but add to them